The Great Return is the Wheel of Heaven framework's name for the anticipated\nofficial arrival of the Elohim on Earth — the event the Raëlian\nsource material is oriented toward, and the moment the corpus reads its\ncomparative work as pointing to. In the source material the return is not\nunconditional. Humanity must want it; must show enough unification and wisdom to\nreceive advanced knowledge without misusing it; must build the\nEmbassy — also called the Third Temple — on\nneutral ground in a country with a mild climate; and must guarantee that the\nElohim's craft will not be met by military force. When those conditions are met,\nthe source material promises a transfer of roughly 25,000 years of scientific\nknowledge from the Elohim to the humanity they created.
\nThe name itself is late. The foundational conditions were set out in\nThe Book Which Tells the Truth\n(1974); the phrase \"Great Return\" belongs to the message dated 13 December 1997,\nin which Yahweh writes that \"the hour of our Great Return is near.\"\nThe framework treats the return as the culminating event of the present\nAge of Apocalypse — the post-1945 period of recovery and\ndisclosure — and as the opening of the Golden Age of\nAquarius that follows. Its timing is left open:\nthe source material speaks of imminence without a calendar, and the conditional\nstructure makes the date depend on humanity's response rather than on a fixed\nhour.
\nThe conditions for the return come from a single passage in The Book Which\nTells the Truth, where Yahweh tells Claude Vorilhon what would have to be true\nbefore the Elohim arrive openly:
\n\n\nIf people on Earth want us to give them the benefit of our experience and help\nthem gain 25,000 years of scientific knowledge, they have to show us that they\nwant to meet us, and above all demonstrate that they deserve it, and that all\nthis can be done without any danger to us. [...] We know that our arrival could\nimprove many things and unite nations, but we have to feel that people really\nwant to see us, and that they are truly starting to unify.
\n— Yahweh, in Vorilhon, Le Livre qui dit la vérité (1974)
\n
Four terms are folded together here: that humanity genuinely wants the arrival\nrather than having it imposed; that it is unified and wise enough to receive\nadvanced knowledge responsibly; that the Elohim's craft is safe from military\nforces — the same passage notes that \"human warplanes have tried to chase our\ncrafts, taking us for enemies\"; and that it understands who the Elohim are\nrather than mistaking them for gods or for adversaries. The book adds the fifth,\nphysical condition: the Embassy, a prepared residence on neutral extraterritorial\nground where the Elohim can land and stay. The architectural specification\nbelongs to the Embassy entry. What matters for the return is that\nthe building is its precondition, not its consequence — the Elohim will not\narrive until there is a place ready to receive them.
\nThe knowledge transfer is fixed at a figure: roughly 25,000 years, the gap the\nsource material places between present terrestrial science and the Elohim's own.\nThat number is close to one precessional Great Year (about\n25,772 years on the modern astronomical reckoning) and close to the interval the\nsource material gives for the Elohim's presence on Earth since the original\nsynthesis of life. The framework reads that coincidence as calibration — a\nproject timed to the turning of the sky — rather than as an accident, while\nnoting that the source states the correspondence only in outline.
\nThe phrase \"Great Return\" enters with the message of 13 December 1997, the\ntwenty-fourth anniversary of the first 1973 contact:
\n\n\nThe hour of our Great Return is near, and we will support and protect the most\ndevoted ones among you. [...] May your joy in seeing the approach of our Great\nReturn give you wings to overcome the last obstacles of the journey.
\n— Yahweh, \"Message of the Elohim, December 13th, 1997\"
\n
The 1997 message shifts the tone toward proximate expectation and, in the same\nbreath, frees the Embassy from its original site. After repeated Israeli refusals\nto grant land near Jerusalem, the message authorises the Raëlian Movement to seek\nextraterritorial status \"from all nations on Earth,\" with Israel keeping a final\noption. A later message of 6 August 2015 declared the Elohim's protection of\nIsrael withdrawn. The framework records these shifts as part of the source\nmaterial's own account and takes no position on their political content.
\nOn the framework's reading the Great Return is the Elohim's own return to a\ncreation now grown up enough to receive them. The original arrival, roughly\n25,000 years ago, was one-directional: the Elohim came to an unprepared Earth to\nsynthesise life and shape humanity. The return reverses the relation. It comes to\na humanity that has recovered enough of the makers' capabilities — genetics,\nspaceflight, the reading of its own scriptures — to meet them as something nearer\na partner than a subject. The inheritance the source promises, the 25,000 years\nof knowledge, is the content of that meeting: not a conquest but a handing-over,\noffered to a species now in a position to accept or decline it.
\nThe Embassy is the hinge of the reading. Because the Elohim will not arrive\nwithout a prepared place to receive them, the framework treats the building of\nthat place as the concrete form the return's preconditions take. The\nThird Temple of the Hebrew prophets and the\nNew Jerusalem that descends in Revelation 21 are read, in\nthe canon, as two older names for the same structure — the residence the Elohim\nasked humanity to build so that they could land openly and stay. The return is\nwhat happens once it stands.
\nThe return also marks a turn in the framework's calendar. The present\nAge of Apocalypse is, on the canon's reading, the period of\nrecovery and disclosure that opened around 1945 — the stretch in which humanity\nreacquires the makers' capabilities and their record becomes legible again. The\nGreat Return is the event that closes it: the point at which recovery gives way\nto open reunion and the Golden Age of Aquarius proper begins.\nThe framework places the return near the Pisces-to-Aquarius transition for that\nreason, with the exact moment left to depend on whether the preconditions are\nmet.
\nThe framework reads the Great Return alongside a pattern that recurs across the\nworld's religions: the expectation of a figure who returns or arrives to close\none age and open another. It sets these expectations beside the canon while\nkeeping each in its own terms rather than collapsing them into one.
\nThe framework's claim is that these expectations preserve, in the vocabulary each\ntradition had to hand, an awareness of the same anticipated event — the Elohim's\nreturn. It is careful about the strength of that claim. The traditions differ\nfrom one another in ways that matter: a returning Davidic king is not a future\nBuddha, and neither is a resurrected saviour. The framework does not flatten those\ndifferences or insist that every return-figure is a direct memory of the same\nthing. What it offers, as interpretation rather than as demonstration, is that\nthe recurrence of the pattern across cultures separated by great distance and\ntime is better read as convergence on a real expectation than as coincidence. The\nbroader cross-tradition case is developed in the\nList of prophets and religions, and the\nprecessional shape of the sleeping king who wakes — Kronos, Saturn, the Once and\nFuture King — is treated alongside the Return in\nHamlet's Mill.
\nThe framework's reading is its own, and neither mainstream scholarship nor the\ntraditions it draws on makes it. Mainstream Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and the\nrest read their return-figures theologically, not as memories of an\nextraterrestrial arrival, and none accepts the identification of a Raëlian\nEmbassy with the Third Temple or the New Jerusalem. Academic study of the\neschatological literature — the messianism of Gershom Scholem and Moshe Idel, the\nMahdi scholarship of Abdulaziz Sachedina and David Cook, the Zoroastrian work of\nMary Boyce and Anders Hultgård — reads these expectations in their own historical\nsettings. The entry presents the Return as canon rather than as consensus, and\nleaves the two standing side by side.
\nThe most serious objection the framework takes on is the contact-impact question:\nwhether the arrival of a far more advanced civilisation could be anything but\nruinous for the less advanced one. The historical analogues point the wrong way.\nThe Columbian encounter, the Atlantic slave trade, and the colonial conquests all\nproduced demographic collapse and cultural destruction rather than a peaceful\nexchange of knowledge, and the pattern is consistent enough that the danger\ncannot be waved away. The framework's answer is that the Great Return is built to\navoid that pattern: it is voluntary rather than imposed, conditional on\nhumanity's own readiness, mediated through a prepared institution rather than an\nad-hoc landfall, and undertaken by the species' own makers rather than by\nstrangers with no stake in its flourishing. This is offered as a genuine\ndifference in structure, not as a guarantee — the conditions the source sets,\nabove all the demand for demonstrated wisdom and unification, are themselves an\nadmission that unprepared contact would be dangerous.
\nThere is also the plain fact of an unfulfilled expectation. The 1997 message\ncalled the return \"near\"; nearly three decades later no Embassy has been built\nwith the required extraterritorial status, and no arrival has occurred. The\nframework does not treat the imminence language as a dated prediction, since the\nreturn is conditional rather than scheduled, but it does not hide the gap either.\nThe Embassy's construction — or its continued absence — remains the one part of\nthe framework open to near-term test.
\nThe location history carries real political weight. The withdrawal-of-protection\nmessage of 2015 and the shift away from Israel bear directly on the\nIsraeli–Palestinian conflict and the contested status of the Temple Mount. The\nframework records these statements as part of the source material's account and\ntakes no side in the conflict; its own reading in fact loosens the tie to the\ndisputed ground, since the 1997 authorisation frees the Embassy to be built in\nany consenting nation.
\nVorilhon, Claude (Raël). Le Livre qui dit la vérité (1974) and Les extra-terrestres m'ont emmené sur leur planète (1976), collected as Intelligent Design: Messages from the Designers (current English edition, Raëlian Foundation). [Primary source for the Great Return specification and the broader Raëlian eschatological framework.]
\nVorilhon, Claude (Raël). \"Message of the Elohim, December 13th, 1997.\" In Intelligent Design: Messages from the Designers. [The specific source for the \"Great Return\" designation.]
\nVorilhon, Claude (Raël). \"Withdrawal of the protection of Israel, August 6, 2015.\" Various Raëlian Movement publication venues. [The 2015 declaration on the protection-withdrawal and the shift in Embassy-location preferences.]
\nSendy, Jean. La Lune, clé de la Bible. Julliard, 1968. [The principal philological-historiographic engagement with the Hebrew Bible's eschatological content in the broader neo-euhemerist tradition.]
\nSendy, Jean. Ces dieux qui firent le ciel et la terre. Robert Laffont, 1969.
\nBiglino, Mauro. La Bibbia non è un libro sacro: Il falso letterario che ha fondato due religioni. Mondadori, 2012. [Contemporary philological engagement with the Hebrew Bible, including the eschatological content.]
\nBiglino, Mauro, and Giorgio Cattaneo. The Naked Bible: The Truth About the Most Famous Book in History. 2022.
\nWallis, Paul. Escaping from Eden: Does Genesis Teach That the Human Race Was Created by God or Engineered by ETs? 6th Books, 2020.
\nMaimonides, Moses. Mishneh Torah, Hilkhot Melakhim (Laws of Kings), chapters 11-12. c. 1170-1180. [The principal medieval Jewish systematic treatment of the Mashiach and Messianic Age.]
\nScholem, Gershom. The Messianic Idea in Judaism and Other Essays on Jewish Spirituality. Schocken Books, 1971. [The principal 20th-century scholarly treatment of Jewish messianism.]
\nIdel, Moshe. Messianic Mystics. Yale University Press, 1998.
\nAaltonen, Veikko. The Second Coming of Christ: A Comprehensive Treatment. Christian Eschatology Press, 2015. [Contemporary scholarly treatment of the Christian Parousia.]
\nErickson, Millard J. A Basic Guide to Eschatology: Making Sense of the Millennium. Baker Books, 1998.
\nSachedina, Abdulaziz A. Islamic Messianism: The Idea of the Mahdi in Twelver Shi'ism. SUNY Press, 1981. [Standard scholarly treatment of the Mahdi tradition.]
\nCook, David. Studies in Muslim Apocalyptic. Darwin Press, 2002.
\nHiltebeitel, Alf. Rethinking India's Oral and Classical Epics: Draupadi among Rajputs, Muslims, and Dalits. University of Chicago Press, 1999. [Substantial treatment of Hindu eschatological tradition including Kalki.]
\nKim, Jinah. \"Iconography and Function of Maitreya Buddha.\" Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies. [Standard scholarly treatment of Maitreya.]
\nBoyce, Mary. Zoroastrians: Their Religious Beliefs and Practices. Routledge, 2001. [Standard scholarly introduction to Zoroastrianism including Saoshyant eschatology.]
\nHultgård, Anders. \"Persian Apocalypticism.\" In The Encyclopedia of Apocalypticism, vol. 1, edited by John J. Collins. Continuum, 1998.
\nSagan, Carl. The Cosmic Connection: An Extraterrestrial Perspective. Doubleday, 1973.
\nSagan, Carl. Contact. Simon & Schuster, 1985.
\nWebb, Stephen. If the Universe Is Teeming with Aliens... Where Is Everybody? Seventy-Five Solutions to the Fermi Paradox and the Problem of Extraterrestrial Life. 2nd ed. Springer, 2015.
\nDavies, Paul. The Eerie Silence: Renewing Our Search for Alien Intelligence. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2010.
\nMack, John E. Passport to the Cosmos: Human Transformation and Alien Encounters. Crown, 1999. [The principal Harvard Medical School psychiatrist's engagement with the contact-experience phenomenon.]
\n\"Great Return.\" Raëlian Movement official terminology and publication record.
\n\"Embassy for the Elohim.\" etembassy.org and related Raëlian Movement institutional publications.
\n\"Mashiach.\" Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mashiach
\n\"Second Coming.\" Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Coming
\n\"Mahdi.\" Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahdi
\n\"Maitreya.\" Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maitreya
\n\"Kalki.\" Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalki
\n\"Saoshyant.\" Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saoshyant
\n\"Eschatology.\" Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eschatology
\n\"Potential cultural impact of extraterrestrial contact.\" Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potential_cultural_impact_of_extraterrestrial_contact
\n", "extra": {"alternative_names":["The Return","Second Coming (in some comparative-religion framings)","The Arrival","The Reunification"],"category":"Events & Narratives","claim_type":"framework","editorial_pass":"2026-07","entry_type":"event","infobox":{"chronological_placement":"The framework places the Great Return in the Age of Aquarius (post-2,160 CE on the broader reckoning), with the contemporary period (early 21st century CE) as the transitional phase; the timing is treated as contingent on the preconditions rather than as a fixed date","comparative_eschatology":"Connected by the framework to the Jewish Mashiach, Christian Parousia, Islamic Mahdi and return of Isa, Buddhist Maitreya, Hindu Kalki, Zoroastrian Saoshyant, Taoist Li Hong, and the broader cross-cultural eschatological-savior pattern","designation_origin":"Specifically named in the December 13, 1997 \"Message of the Elohim\" preserved in *Intelligent Design: Messages from the Designers*","embassy_location":"Initially proposed in Israel (preferably the Jerusalem area), with seven formal land requests denied by Israeli authorities between approximately 1990 and 2015; on August 6, 2015, the Vorilhon-mediated message declared the Elohim's protection of Israel withdrawn; subsequent proposals have involved Palestinian Authority territories and other locations","framework_significance":"The culminating event of the corpus's framework; the moment the Elohim project on Earth is oriented toward; the opening of the Golden Age / Age of Aquarius proper","knowledge_transfer":"Approximately 25,000 years of scientific knowledge, equivalent to the gap between current human technological capability and the Elohim's","preconditions":"(1) Humanity's genuine desire for the arrival; (2) demonstration of unification and wisdom to receive advanced knowledge responsibly; (3) construction of the Embassy (\"Third Temple\") on neutral territory; (4) safety guarantee from human military forces","primary_sources":"Vorilhon, *Le Livre qui dit la vérité* (1974); *Les extra-terrestres m'ont emmené sur leur planète* (1976); the Messages collection, particularly the December 13, 1997 message; 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